Opposition Parties Vow to Proceed With Jan. 8 Election

Monday

Dec 31, 2007 at 4:06 AM

Pakistan’s largest political party picked Benazir Bhutto’s 19-year-old son to succeed her as chairman and vowed to forge ahead with elections next week.

SOMINI SENGUPTA

NAUDERO, Pakistan — Three days after the violent killing of its leader, Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s largest political party on Sunday picked her 19-year-old son to succeed her as chairman and vowed to forge ahead with elections next week, immediately creating a new quandary for the government about whether to delay the vote.

The moves by Ms. Bhutto’s opposition party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, were clearly aimed at marshaling an outpouring of grief and anger to electoral advantage in the Jan. 8 parliamentary election. The other main opposition party, led by Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, also decided Sunday to call off his previously announced boycott of the vote.

Aides to President Pervez Musharraf have suggested that the election could be postponed, perhaps for months, because of the chaos that has engulfed the country since Ms. Bhutto, the former prime minister returned from exile, was killed while campaigning Thursday. But now the prospect of a delay could further infuriate Ms. Bhutto’s supporters and allies, pressuring Mr. Musharraf to hold the vote and risk a huge defeat at the polls.

Elections officials in Pakistan said Monday that they would take another day to decide on the timing of the polls, according to The Associated Press.

The announcement that Ms. Bhutto’s first-born son, Bilawal, an Oxford undergraduate with no political experience, would lead her party was made at a chaotic news conference at the family’s ancestral home here in a southern Pakistan village.

His father, Asif Ali Zardari, said he would manage the chairmanship on his son’s behalf until he finished his university degree, for a minimum of three years.

The decision to place burden of blood and history on the son reflects not only an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics — three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh as well — but also how much the Pakistan Peoples Party relies on the Bhutto family name and legacy to bind its supporters.

In keeping with his new mantle, the new chairman took a new name, embracing his mother’s maiden name as the newly anointed Bhutto scion.

“My mother always said democracy is the best revenge,” he told reporters in a brief address.

The elder Mr. Zardari said his son would henceforth be known as Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. He instructed reporters not to ask his son any further questions, saying he was “of a tender age.”

Later, in the backyard of the family’s house, the younger Mr. Zardari said in an interview that he had been tutored by his mother to play a role in Pakistani politics, but only after he completes his university education. “There was always a sense of fear I wouldn’t be able to live up to her expectations,” he said. “I hope I will.”

Asked about his most immediate challenge, he said, “First to finish my degree.”

That would appear to rule out any possibility that Ms. Bhutto’s son could become the new leader of Pakistan until he was significantly older. Nonetheless, the elder Mr. Zardari said in an interview, “As her son, he will become a uniting force.”

The younger Mr. Zardari is a student of history at Christ Church College at Oxford University, his mother’s alma mater.

Mr. Zardari said that his wife had expressed the wish in her will that he be left in charge of the party, but that he had decided, with the consent of the executive committee, which met Sunday afternoon at the close of a three-day mourning period, to pass the baton to his son.

He said the will was written on Oct. 16, two days before her return to Pakistan, and given to him after her death, which is when he learned that she had chosen him to succeed her.

“It’s not an easy chair to sit on,” the elder Mr. Zardari said in the interview. “A, she leaves me. B, she ties me in this. To say the least, it’s overbearing.”

Senior party officials said, too, that the younger Mr. Zardari would be a far less controversial titular head than his father, who had been accused of a raft of corruption charges, jailed for a total of 11 years, and blamed in some quarters for some of Ms. Bhutto’s political woes.

It could not be a more difficult time for the party. Ms. Bhutto had held together a large and diverse organization, and even if, on the back of public grief, it were to win the elections, it would be likely to be under great pressure to bring a semblance of stability to a nation racked by a wave of extremist violence.

At the news conference, the elder Mr. Zardari said he would not run in the election and therefore would not be the party’s prime ministerial candidate.

That job, he said, would probably go to the party vice president, the veteran party leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim, but that was a decision, he added, that would have to be made by party leaders.

Mr. Zardari went on to say later in the interview that it would be “very difficult” for the party to survive without Ms. Bhutto. “My biggest job is to keep it from falling apart,” he said.

Ms. Bhutto, 54, was killed Thursday evening as she left a party rally in the city of Rawalpindi, when her car was struck by gunfire and a suicide bombing. Ms. Bhutto’s party and family insist that she was shot in the head. The government disputes it, saying that she struck her head fatally on the sunroof of her car.

Her party appealed Sunday for an international inquiry into her death, along the lines of the investigation into the killing of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister of Lebanon.

The younger Mr. Zardari’s rise echoes the chilling, emotionally resonant path of his mother, who was thrust into public life after her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in 1979 by order of the military ruler, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq.

Shortly before the official announcement of his ascension at a crowded news conference came a ceremonious rearrangement of the dais. His newly constructed name was pinned to the back of a high-backed red chair, which was then adorned with a cushion and placed at the center of a long table. He entered, dressed in a black salwar kameez, the traditional long tunic and pants, and Armani glasses, biting his lips and carrying a portrait of his mother. He promised to carry on his mother’s legacy as “a symbol of the federation.”

Rehman Malik, a senior party official, said Ms. Bhutto had asked him to coach her son in the basic workings of politics and government, from teaching him how to assess others to taking him to the halls of Parliament.

“She has groomed up her husband,” he said. “She was grooming her son also. She was telling me many times he will grow up and take over the party.”

For his part, the younger Mr. Zardari said he had discussed with his mother the prospects of entering politics, but avoided getting into details about who would take over after her. “We always tried not to have this specific conversation because we hoped this day would come, if not never, then far, far in the future,” he said.

In the interview, he spoke quietly, but politely, in the backyard of a crowded house in a remote village in a country where he had spent little time. He and his two younger siblings were raised mostly in Dubai.

The young man took that in, also quietly, and waited for them to pass before speaking again. He said he feared for the survival of the country. When reminded that he had not grown up here, his answer came swiftly. He said he was lucky to have been reared by his mother, who knew the country well. Asked if she had ever encouraged him to succeed her as the leader of the party, he was vague.

“She always said I had to finish my education before I got into politics,” he answered. “She always said I would do something for Pakistan.”

Politics here is as much about matters of the heart as anything else. Which is why Abida Hussain, another senior party official, when asked about the options facing the party at this crucial juncture, said simply, “It’s Bilawal.”

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